Ice Quality
by HermioneGirl96
Summary: One of Yuuri's college friends invites him to spend Christmas with her family, and Celestino approves as long as Yuuri promises to skate while he's there. Trouble is, the town's indoor rink is closed for renovations. A one-shot set during Yuuri's time in college in Detroit.


**Disclaimer: I don't own Yuri on Ice.**

 **A/N: I just went skating on really terrible ice and I needed to write about it.**

There was grass coming out of this ice. Not only that, but flooding the baseball diamond clearly hadn't worked at all: patches of grainy red sand peered out from the surface of what Yuuri wasn't really sure could be called ice at all. He didn't want to be rude, but he really didn't think he could skate on this. He didn't think anyone could.

Alison looked from Yuuri's face to the ice and back again. "I'm really sorry," she said. "Mind giving it a try anyway?"

Part of Yuuri wanted to say no. He wanted to turn around and walk to the main road while calling an absurdly expensive taxi to take him all the way back to Detroit. But he liked Alison—not like _that_ , of course, but still—so he found himself nodding.

.

 _One week earlier . . ._

Yuuri and Alison were studying for their Econometrics final together. Yuuri had chosen to major in economics because he thought it would impress people (read: make people less disappointed in him) and help him get a job in case figure skating didn't work out (which he'd never really believed it would, despite all the evidence that he was good enough). Alison typically said she was majoring in econ to get a job, but she'd told Yuuri recently that her high school economics teacher had been amazing and she really was majoring in econ because, thanks to him, she couldn't get enough of the subject. Alison's well-concealed enthusiasm suited Yuuri just fine. He probably would never have had the courage to approach her and suggest being study buddies if he'd known how much she liked economics (and how good her grades were . . . ), but, now that they were in the habit of studying together, her knowledge of the subject was a huge asset for him.

In between reviewing fixes for heteroscedastic data and how to properly compute degrees of freedom and Bonferroni confidence intervals, Alison asked Yuuri about his plans for winter break. The line of questioning started simply: "Are you going back to Japan for Christmas?"

"Nah," Yuuri said. "I can't really afford the plane ticket."

"That's so sad!" Alison exclaimed. "Do you have a host family in Detroit at least? I know sometimes international students have host families . . ."

"No, the closest thing I have is my coach," said Yuuri.

"Will you be spending Christmas with him?"

"Probably," Yuuri said. "At the rink."

"What?! I mean _celebrating_ Christmas."

Yuuri rolled his eyes. "I'm not exactly Christian, Alison."

Alison blushed. "Oh, right. Do you usually celebrate Christmas at all?"

Yuuri smiled gently. "Yeah, in Japan it's mostly a holiday about spreading happiness. Christmas Eve is considered a romantic holiday; couples spend it together, usually. Not that I've ever dated anyone."

" _Never?_ Are you serious?"

Yuuri frowned slightly. "Why does that surprise you?"

"Just—you're a really sweet person. Surely _someone_ must have wanted to date you by this point."

Yuuri shrugged. "I spend all my time at the rink, and while I'm there I'm very focused. I haven't really had time for romance, and I don't know anyone who wouldn't mind how busy I am."

"Everyone's busy," Alison returned. "And come on, not even Pitchit could stand it?"

Yuuri frowned harder this time. "Ew, Pitchit? I'm sorry, but no. He's my best friend. I couldn't date him. That would be weird. Besides, I think he likes women."

"Okay, okay," said Alison. "So you don't like women?"

Yuuri sighed. "I guess I walked into that one. No, I'm gay."

"Is that a secret?"

"Kind of."

"Okay, I won't tell anyone then." Alison looked back at her textbook for a moment and then said, "Oh right, we were talking about Christmas plans. Do you want to come spend Christmas break with my family?"

"I probably need to stick around and practice."

"Come on, my town has a great indoor rink and free skates every day for one to three."

"Yeah, but I need ice time by myself, not just a free skate time with the general public." Yuuri looked down. "I'm sorry; that sounded conceited."

"No, I get it," said Alison. "You're a professional. Just think about it, okay?"

.

So here Yuuri was, a week later, having secured a week off of regular practice as long as he could promise Celestino that he would skate daily during the free skate at the local rink. Only it turned out that the local rink was under renovations and was closed to the public. The town's hockey teams were practicing at a rink two towns over, but that rink was so overwhelmed trying to support extra hockey teams that it had stopped offering open skates at all. Which left Yuuri stranded in a tiny Midwestern town with only this badly flooded outdoor rink to skate on. He was pretty sure he hadn't touched ice that awful since he was a little kid, if even then.

"Come on, I know you promised your coach you were going to skate," said Alison, sitting down on the bench that baseball players sat on during the summer when this was their field. She started taking off her boots and putting on her skates—hockey skates, Yuuri noticed.

"You play hockey?" Yuuri asked, sitting down next to her and taking his own boots off.

"Played," she corrected him. "When I was younger. Both my older brothers did, and I grew up skating with them, so it wasn't really a question."

"You're used to better ice than this, too, then," said Yuuri.

Alison laughed. "God, yes. But I know how to make do." She stood up, walked with her guards on down to the beginning of the ice, stood on one foot and then the other to take her guards off, dropped her guards in the snow, and then pushed off. She flailed her arms a little as she skated over the first few rough patches of ice, but she made it to the center of the rink, which was less bumpy, and then she started skating in a counterclockwise circle, crossing her right foot over her left like she'd done it every day of her life. From this distance, her auburn hair stood out against her blue coat, and her legs looked lithe and graceful in her skinny jeans.

Yuuri finished tying his skates and joined her on the ice, wobbling at first in the same places she had. He could feel the tension in the bottom half of his shins that said he didn't trust this ice. It had been awhile since he tensed up there, but then, it had been a long time since he'd skated on ice he expected to betray him. Celestino would kill him if he managed to get injured horsing around on this sort of ice. At the same time, Alison was proving that it was possible to move gracefully even here, so maybe Yuuri should calm down a bit. He bent his knees a little more, like Alison was doing (that was surely her hockey training), and, as his center of gravity sank lower, he felt the tension at the base of his shins release. He could do this. He could skate this ice without falling. Jumps would certainly be impossible (or at least extremely inadvisable), as would fancy step sequences, but there was something to just putting blades to ice that felt good, and here, with only one person watching, Yuuri felt the pressure of training fall away, and he was left with nothing but his love for the ice, as terrible as it was.

Yuuri followed Alison in her circle for a while before venturing out further into the outfield. This turned out to be a mistake; his skate went right through an air bubble in the ice, so he turned around and headed back to where Alison was still skating her circle. As Yuuri approached, Alison turned and plowed to a stop, sending up a bit of an ice spray despite the fact that she hadn't been going very fast. "I'm so right-handed," she said, laughing at herself. "I didn't even think about skating clockwise." She turned around and began some slightly wobbly crossovers in the other direction. "See?" she called over her shoulder to Yuuri. "I'm so bad in this direction!"

Yuuri found a tiny patch of smooth ice and decided to try a few spins. "You're doing fine," he called to her before sending himself whirling.

Alison waited until Yuuri was no longer spinning to say, "I appreciate you lying for me, but you don't need to. I know I'm not as good as I should be at left-over-right crossovers. Also, wow, you're so graceful."

Yuuri smiled. "I appreciate you lying for me."

"I'm not lying!" Alison insisted.

"Sure," said Yuuri, but he smiled some more as he threw himself into another spin.

 **A/N: I just like the idea of Yuuri making a platonic, non-figure-skating friend while in college, okay?**


End file.
